Monday, March 14 has shaped up to be an amazing day of programming at South-by-Southwest if you have even micron of interest in any element of robotics.

Because, like an eventful Matryoshka doll, the Southby organizers have essentially programmed a daylong mini “conference within a conference” with the robotics minitrack that is assembled.

Beginning at 9:30am in the Hilton Garden Inn – Sabine Room (located at 500 North IH 35) and ending sometime around 6:00pm, enthusiasts of robotics – or what I like to refer to as the “ultimate field of digital interactive” convergence – will be treated to an outstanding line-up of topics and speakers.

Students say it’s “the hardest fun you will ever have.” Just like “real world” product development, building a competitive robot requires diverse science and engineering disciplines and kids all over the world are doing it! This panel includes experienced robot makers and mentors from Texas Instruments and National Instruments who can answer your questions and have you wishing you were still in school.

Will supercomputing intelligences outsmart human-level intelligence? Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines is the world’s most known advocacy of a technology breakthrough that will change the face of humanity and the entire world. Kurzweil claims that the accelerating, exponential growth of technology will result in such a Singularity. This panel dissects the very core of the Singularity, if and when it will occur, and what we can expect to happen.

Robots seem to be everywhere – from car assembly on factory floors to debris sweeping on your kitchen floor. But, with the popularity of events like Maker Faire, they are broadly entering the creative fields in new and innovative ways. More than an exotic, whimsical exercise, much of the work behind robot-inspired art installations is driving the discovery of technical innovations …come pick up lessons learned from the converging areas of materials science, haptics, interactive control, and communications that contribute to this new art form.

Telepresence is a straightforward application of robot technology — a robot becomes your eyes, ears and possibly arms and legs which allows you to become “telepresent” in a remote location. But telepresence is only one example of how you might want to interact with a robot over the web. We are using social networks to interact with robots and physical devices so they can become part of your custom information network. We use Google technologies such a Gtalk and Android to form the basis of the network. This project is open source.

From launching robots into space to discovering distant galaxies: how the public is hacking into open source space exploration. As technology shifts from a means of passive consumption to active creation, people are collaborating on a massive scale. Amateurs were once considered to be at the crux of scientific discovery, but over time have been put on the sidelines. Despite this, citizen science is witnessing a renaissance. Agencies such as NASA no longer have a monopoly on the global space program and more participatory projects are harnessing the power of open collaboration for exploring space on a faster schedule. But you don’t need to be a robotics engineer to participate – open source teams are open for anyone to join.

Presenter: Ariel Waldman

We hope you can join us – it should be an astonishing day of sharing, learning, and advancing this major field of tech innovation!